Immigrants' location choice in Belgium

This paper analyses migratory streams to Belgian municipalities between 1994-2007. The Belgian population register constitutes a rich and unique database of yearly migrant in inflows and stocks broken down by nationality, which allows us to empirically explain the location choice of immigrants at municipality level. Specifically, we aim at separating the network effect, captured by the number of previous arrivals, from other location-specific characteristics such as local labor or housing market conditions and the presence of public amenities. We expect labor and housing market variables to op... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Jayet, Hubert
Rayp, Glenn
Ruyssen, Ilse
Ukrayinchuk, Nadiya
Dokumenttyp: workingPaper
Erscheinungsdatum: 2014
Schlagwörter: International migration / Location choice / Network effects / Nested logit
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-26598635
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/137830

This paper analyses migratory streams to Belgian municipalities between 1994-2007. The Belgian population register constitutes a rich and unique database of yearly migrant in inflows and stocks broken down by nationality, which allows us to empirically explain the location choice of immigrants at municipality level. Specifically, we aim at separating the network effect, captured by the number of previous arrivals, from other location-specific characteristics such as local labor or housing market conditions and the presence of public amenities. We expect labor and housing market variables to operate at different levels and develop a nested model of location choice in which an immigrant first chooses a broad area, roughly corresponding to a labor market, and subsequently chooses a municipality within this area. We find that the spatial repartition of immigrants in Belgium is determined by both network effects and local characteristics. The determinants of local attractiveness vary by nationality, as expected, but for all nationalities, they seem to dominate the impact of network effects.